Hooking Up

by Tom Wolfe

  “Them dayum Somali militiamen,” said Ziggefoos, “they figured later mussa been four or five hunnert uv’em. They didn’t have no uniforms, Aidid’s militiamen didn’t. They wasn’t quartered in no billets, either. They was all over town, looking just like ever‘buddy else, living in all’em dayum shacks or jes out on the dayum street. They was a goddayum perm’nen’ly installed living ambush ready to come daown on any uv‘us soon’s we exposed ourself. They was up in trees, they was hiding behind them goddayum hootches they got all over Mogadishu—look lack humps a dirt, one aft’other—they was lots uv’em men dressed lack women with AK-47s and grenades and I don’t know whatall hidden under their skirts. They got rocket-propelled grenades and ‘em Glock automatics an’evvy other dayum thang, them summitches did, and the next thang we knowed, one a the MH-60s, h‘it’s daown, h’it’s crashed, h‘it’s daown in the street, and now we got to go out fum the hotel inny goddayum street in the broad daylat’n form a p’rim‘ter’round the MH-60, ‘cause the pilot, he’s trapped inny wreckage, and he’s still alive. We can hear him yelling: ‘I got a man dead! I got a man dead in here!’ And all of a sudden, I’m seeing guys all around me, buddies a mine, guys I’ve knowed ever since I was in the Rangers, they’s getting blowed away, falling daown dead inny streets a Mogadishu. I move out abaout twenty feet to get a bead on a bunch uv’em’at’s farring at us fum a treetop and—blam!—I’m daown on my goddayum face inny dirt. Goddayum grenade shrapnel’s hit me alla way daown my left arm, my left leg, and the left side a my bayack.”

  With that, he lifted his left arm until his elbow was up beside his ear, and Irv could see clear as day on the monitor a huge scar on the back of Ziggefoos’s upper arm that ran all the way down inside his T-shirt sleeve.

  “That’s jes one uv‘em,” said Ziggefoos. “I got scars lack at’air all overt the left side a my body. We was caught in a ambush, Merry Kerry, a ambush! The ambush a all ambushes! By the time we come out the hotel with them pris‘ners, they was waiting. We didn’t know it, but we was in a ambush! Them Somalis?—and all’at spear farpower?—they‘d—wale, it was lack they’d jes growed up out a the graound and sprouted like leaves on the trees, and they was jes raining that sheeut’scuse me, Merry Kerry—jes pouring it on us from evvy which way.”

  On the monitor fed by the camera fixed on Mary Cary’s face, Irv could see that her lips were parted and her eyes were wide. She looked as if she’d had her breath knocked out.

  “Me, I couldn’t move,” said Ziggefoos. “My check was lying in the blood that was gushing out my own arm. Jimmy”—he motioned toward Jimmy Lowe, and on the monitors Irv could see Jimmy Lowe and Flory blinking away at a furious rate—“Jimmy come out to git me, come out inny street to git me ‘thout no cover’t‘all, and—blam!—Jimmy’s daown, too. AK-47 bullet tore rat thoo his shoulder and come out his bayack, and another’n went rat thoo his thigh, and the two uv’us, we’s both uv’us lane out inny middle a the street bleeding like stuck pigs, and the air’s full a shrapnel and the wust shitchoo ever saw—’scuse me, Merry Kerry—and I swear fo’ God in heaven I could see AK-47 bullets coming at us and going overhaid. You can see’ em at a certain angle. Look lack bees coming atchoo, bees fum hell. And you wanna know how we got out a that bloody street?”

  “Not particularly,” said Mary Cary, “and I don’t—”

  But Ziggefoos, his narrow-set eyes ablaze, talked right over her: “This little piece a steel ratcheer—” He reached over and put his hand on Flory’s shoulder. On the monitor fixed on Flory, Irv could see the runt’s eyes blinking away. “Hunnert’n forty-five pounds soaking wet, maybe, but he’s a piece a steel, Merry Kerry, and what h’it takes, he got it ratcheer.” He tapped his chest, right over the heart, with his fist. “Flory, he awready seen two uv’us cut daown, and he come out’air inny street running and crouching and weaving, and he grabbed both uv’us by our boots—our boots—and he starts dragging us back to the p’rim’ter. Shrapnel hits him in his left fo’arm and his rat calf and his neck—his neck!—and a bullet goes thoo’is ribs and breaks two uv’em, and this little piece a steel ratcheer”—he shook Flory’s shoulder with his hand—“he don’t even stop. He keeps draggin’ us till he got us bayack inside the p’rim’ter—and you wanna know if I ever been in far fat. Jesus Christ, Merry Kerry!”

  “No,” said Mary Cary, “what I want to know is—”

  But no mere words in the world were going to stop the righteous Ziggy Ziggefoos now.

  “We was pinned down in’at ambush fer nigh onto fo’teen hours, Merry Kerry, and we didn’t have no medics, no morphine, no nothing. By and by it’s nattime, and it’s dark, and the muzzle flashes, I mean, you can see’em flashing out of the trees, fum behind the hootches, fum evvy goddayum place you look. And the grenades—it was a ambush that wouldn’t stop. Charlie Company, they send the QRF—the Quick Reaction Force?—they send the QRF out from the airport to give us some cover, and they git ambushed, daown at the K-4 Circle. And lack you was talking abaout the Yew N? What a goddayum joke! They’s trying to git the Pakistanis and the Malaysians to move in with some armored vehicles, and come to find out they’s so yellow, them worthless bastards, they wouldn’t move out till after midnight, and the onliest reason they moved out then was’at one of our officers put the muzzle of a .357 Magnum upside the haid a one a their colonels, and he says to him, he says, ‘You’re haidin’ for the Olympic Hostel with your armored vehicles or you’re one goddayum stone-daid gook motherfucker—’scuse me, Merry Kerry.”

  “Okay,” said Mary Cary, “suppose we assume, for the sake of argument, that you were—”

  Not a word of it reached Ziggefoos, who kept on paralyzing her and the very camera and the very monitor in the hidden compartment with his glittering eyes. “Lack I was telling you, forty uv’us fum our unit? And twenty-eight uv’us was wounded, and seven uv’us got blowed away, got killed. One a our guys got blowed away out inny street, and he didn’t have no Jimmy Lowe, he didn’t have no Flory, to come out’air’n’risk their lafs to drag’im back inside any p’rim’ter, and the Somalis, they got to’im fo’ we could git to’im, and them fucking animals—’scuse me, Merry Kerry—they pulled the uniform rat off his body, and they drug him through the streets of Mogadishu by ropes tied to his wrists, laughing and hooting like hyenas, flat out grinning like hyenas with their teeth dripping blood after the kill because they’d slaughtered a’Merican.

  “And you stand’eh, and you ax me if I ever been in a far fat.’Scuse me, Merry Kerry, but you’re fulla shit.”

  “Spoken like a true credit to the military,” said Mary Cary with an icy sarcasm. The insult had roused her to anger, renewed her sharp edge. Irv’s heart was hammering away as he watched it all on the monitors. “So now that you’ve got all that out of your system, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to tell me what any of it has to do with the murder of Randy Valentine.”

  “Okay,” said Ziggefoos, “that’s’zackly what I was fixing to tale you. Being in a military unit’s abaout being a man, and what the unit tales you and keeps on taling you is, ‘This here’s the test of a man. A man don’t cut and run. A man risks his laf . . fer the unit.’Yeah, I reckon he risks it fer his country and fer the flag and fer the folks back home and all’at, but you talk to anybuddy’s ever been in a real far fat, a real field a far, and if he’s honest, he’s gon’ tale you what I’m taling you rat now. You risk yer laf fer the unit, and the unit’s alia time hammering away at one thang: ‘Be a man.’ H’it don’t say, ‘Be a good person, and h’it shore’s hell don’t say, ‘Be a good woman.’ I mean, you start putting women in combat, and I kin tale you sump’m jes as shore’s the sun comes up in the moaning: You kin fergit abaout having real fattin’ units. Because the unit’s got jes one thang to say to you: ‘Be a man.’ Same thang with hom’seckshuls. ‘Zackly same thang. You try to put hom’seckshuls in a fattin’ unit? You kin jest fergit abaout thayut, too. The unit caint say, ‘Be a man—more or less,’ or ‘Be a man—in most respecks,’ b
ecause the kinda ol’ boy you got to have jes ain’t gon’ set still fer that, and you kin wait a thousand yers and try to enlatin’im, and he still ain’t gon’ set still. Naow, you kin call ‘at prej’dice if you want, and maybe h’it is, but that don’t change the facks a laf a’tall. You folks, you teevee folks, you best tale ‘Merica she better look after her Jimmy Lowes and her Florys,’cause when push comes to shove, she’s gonna need ‘em, and push always comes to shove sooner or later, an’ you gon’ need somebody—you teevee folks, too—you gon’ need somebody to fat yer wars for ya, and those somebodys gon’ be and always has been your Jimmy Lowes and your Florys.”

  Long before he could begin to analyze what he had just heard, a red alert had gone off in Irv’s head. This kid Ziggefoos was a Tobacco Road throwback, an unrenovated native, a true Southern primitive, a Florida redneck—a skinhead—and he was spouting total fascist bullshit—but no way could this rant be allowed on Day & Night. To witless segments of a TV audience, to the idiot millions, he might come across as a sincere young fighting man from the bosom of rural America who had risked his life in the service of his country and been grievously wounded in a far fat in the godforsaken streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. He wasn’t blinking with nervousness the way Jimmy Lowe and Flory were. He wasn’t being hysterical or defensive or evasive. He was looking Mary Cary right in the eye. There had to be something Irv could do, something in the editing—

  Apparently Mary Cary sensed the same sort of thing. “That’s all very well,” she said, “but do you call assaulting a gay soldier ‘being a man’?”

  “Nawwwwww, I wouldn’t call ‘at being a man,” said Ziggefoos, “and neither’d anybuddy ailse I know, but we don’ need you to tale us’at. I know you’re ver enlatined. Everbuddy you see on TV is ver enlatined abaout all’ese thangs. But I wunner how you live yer own lafs. How many hom’seckshuls you got close to you? How many a you want yer own chilrun to be hom’seckshuls? How many a you want hom’seckshuls working’longside you? You don’t mind taling the U.S. Army, you don’t mind taling a fattin’ unit, whirr a man’s job is to risk his laf, you don’t mind taling us to jep’dize the integrity a the unit, when it’s laf and death, but what abaout you—when it ain’t nothing but yer own comfort and peace a mind?”

  Why, the sonofabitch! He was turning the whole thing around! He was bending the English language out of all recognizable shape, but he was managing to turn the whole thing into an attack on the so-called media elite! It was a cliché, and it was preposterous, but he was managing to do it.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” snapped Mary Cary. “Nobody in the television industry, nobody I know of, is going around murdering colleagues just because their sexual orientation is different.”

  It was a good retort, made under the gun, but there was something peevish and argumentative about it. Irv’s mind spun rapidly; this whole last part, the skinhead’s disquisition on the media elite, would have to go, too. No way would it be part of the broadcast. Much of the disquisition on the fighting unit—the fattin’ unit—Christ!—and Bloody Sunday—most of that would have to go, too. Ziggefoos had turned those two skinhead thugs, Jimmy Lowe and Flory, into some kind of heroes, and that Hee Haw accent might just put it over. Of course, he couldn’t cut it all, but—ahhhh! He had an idea. He’d let the sonofabitch talk, but he’d take the camera off him. He’d use the cameras trained only on Jimmy Lowe and Flory. You’d hear Ziggefoos’s voice, but you’d see the other two with their mouths open, looking alarmed and blinking … blinking … Lots of blinking! On television the close-ups of people blinking furiously were devastating. The blinks looked like uncontrollable admissions of guilt. Besides, Jimmy Lowe looked like a brute. If I, Irv Durtscher, kept Jimmy Lowe’s animal face on the screen, blinking guiltily, while Ziggefoos spoke, no one would really be able to pay close attention to Ziggefoos’s argument. He could use Flory and his guilty blinks, too. Flory looked like the usual gang runt, willing to go along with any caper the big boys dictated. Ah!—and he had another idea. Every time Ziggefoos used gross language, every time he said sheeut or anything else of that sort, he’d bleep it. That would make him seem cruder than the actual words would. Oh, he could fix this brute’s hash, him and his Dogpatch theories about manhood and the unit and life and death. Laf’n’death—meeyahhhh—

  “Maybe not,” said Ziggefoos. “Maybe you don’ go’raound murdern each other, but you do sump’m ailse. You go’sem’natin’ stuff abaout the gay lafstyle you don’ even believe yer ownsef, and don’ nobuddy ailse believe it neither, and you git everbuddy worked up, and fellers’at jes natch’ly resent hom’seckshuls, fellers’at know dayum wale it ain’t gon’ work to put’em in a fattin’ unit, they git riled to whirr they do thangs they won’t lackly to do if you people’d jes to!’ the plain truth.”

  “All right,” said Mary Cary, “for the sake of argument, let’s say that’s true. Are you telling me that’s why the three of you assaulted Randy Valentine?”

  “I ain’t said nothin’ lack’at,” said Ziggefoos.

  “But you did!” Mary Cary said, gesturing at the television set once more. “There you were! You said it in your own words! Jimmy just spelled it all out. He said he kicked in the door. The door knocked Randy Valentine up against the wall. And then he grabbed him.”

  Good girl, Mary Cary! She was steering it back to the confession made on videotape.

  “Wale, you got it all wrong,” said Jimmy Lowe, giving the television set a dismissive wave and getting up and turning his back on it, as if to leave.

  “‘At’s rat,” said Flory, doing the same thing, “you got it all wrong.”

  “But they’re your own words,” said Mary Cary, “from your own mouths.”

  “Yeah, but y’all rigged’is all up,” said Jimmy Lowe.

  It was beautiful. He didn’t even look at Mary Cary when he said it. It came out as a whine, not much above a mutter. For television purposes, it was as good as an outright confession. The retreat, the pout, the refusal to look the accuser in the eye, the muffled voice—it had guilt written all over it, and by now every television viewer knew the vocabulary.

  Even Ziggefoos had gotten up and turned away. All three seemed like whipped dogs. They were gravitating toward the door of the RV.

  Ziggefoos looked at Mary Cary and said, “If you think we’re gonna set still and talk to Day’n’Nat abaout all’is bullsheeut, you got another think coming.”

  Irv couldn’t figure out what he was talking about at first. Then it dawned on him: they didn’t even know the ambush had been taped! They never dreamed that four cameras had been trained on them ever since they stepped into the RV! They thought this was some sort of preinterview! They didn’t even know it was an actual ambush!

  Oh, it was beautiful. He had dreamed that this piece would work out, and now he could see that it would.

  “Nevertheless,” said Mary Cary, “we’d like to give you a chance to respond.”

  Jimmy Lowe, who was at the door, wheeled about. “Me, I’d lack a chance to respond to’at ho’at brought us aout here, whirrever the hale she went.’At’s who I’d lack to respond to. Didn’ know you people hard hose to do yer dirty work.”

  Hard hose? Even Irv, practiced as he was in these boys’ patois, needed an extra moment to translate: hired whores. He’d love to use that line—even though referring to Lola as a whore was a little too close to the truth-because Jimmy Lowe sounded so ominous when he said it. Suppose he became violent? Attacked Mary Cary? (Attacked Irv Durtscher!) Had he gone too far in using a topless dancer to make sure the three skinheads watched their incriminating tape? Well—editing would solve everything. Could Gordon and Roy and Ferretti stop them, if it came to that? They were big, but these three skinheads were … Rangers! Irv crouched there in his secret compartment, his headset on, his eyes pinned on the monitors, his world lit only by their lifeless cathode glow, his mind furiously double-tracking from … Irv Durtscher the crusader against … fascism! … in America … to Irv Durts
cher the possessor of this one and only skin, which God had never intended to go up against young Lords of Testosterone such as he saw on these screens.

  To his vast relief, as he watched the monitors, he saw the three boys file through the door and depart the RV. He saw Ferretti pull the door shut behind them and lock it. Then he saw Ferretti break into a silent laugh and look at Mary Cary. Then he saw Mary Cary heave a big sigh and shake her head, as if severely disappointed. Then he heard Ferretti, grinning and chuckling, say, “If you think we’re gonna set still and talk to Day’n’Nat abaout all’is bullsheeut …” And still Irv did not take off his headset and forsake his secret compartment and join them in the RV’s living room. Suppose they came back! Suppose they stormed back into the RV!

  But then, on the monitor, he saw Mary Cary heading back toward the partition. Mustn’t let—

  Quickly he took off the headset and went through the concealed door. She was right there in front of him, breathing rapidly, her eyes flashing. She looked furious.

  “Mary Cary!” said Irv. “That was great! You were fabulous!”

  “Oh, I blew it, Irv,” said Mary Cary. “I lost’em. I couldn’t keep’em here. And I had them! They were finally where we wanted them! They were defensive! They were getting angry!”

  He stared at her. He couldn’t believe it. “I don’t know what you’re worried about,” he said. “We got everything we needed.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Besides, the big one, Lowe, he was getting pretty hot. I was afraid—you never know with a guy like that.”

  “Oh, please,” said Mary Cary. “Those kids didn’t know whether to whistle ‘Dixie’ or go blind.”

  “All the same—” Irv broke off the sentence and studied Mary Cary’s big Blond Bombshell face. She was genuinely angry. She meant it. She actually wanted to stay here and keep slugging it out.

  “I know what you mean,” he said finally. “But don’t worry about it. You were great.”